Market Movers

US consumer prices rose 3.7% year over year in September, up from 3.4% in August and above the 3.6% economists expected, the Labor Department said. Markets priced a higher chance of a Fed rate increase later this month: expectations of a quarter-point hike nearly doubled to 44% on the CME FedWatch tool. Treasury yields and the dollar rose, and the S&P 500 and Nasdaq opened lower. The day before, tech shares had fallen on worries about Chinese progress in AI chips and a Broadcom executive's comparison of AI buying to gambling.

The National Payments Corporation of India postponed the October 15 start of a 0.4% fee on eligible merchant UPI transactions above ₹2,000 (about $21), citing the festive shopping season; it will now come after Diwali, with no new date. Retailers and petrol pump operators had opposed it, some saying they would stop accepting UPI. The fee would end a policy, in place since January 2020, of keeping UPI free for merchants. UPI processed 24.07 billion transactions worth ₹29.37 trillion (about $305 billion) in September.

Bengaluru-based Scimplify raised $25 million in an all-equity round led by Hitachi Ventures, with customers Henkel and Teknor Apex joining, bringing its total equity funding to $80 million. A person familiar with the deal put the post-money valuation at $250 million. The startup develops manufacturing processes in its labs in Bengaluru and Hyderabad and hands them to partner factories, using its AI platform Scinode to coordinate; co-founder Sachin Santhosh says it has gone from customer requirements to finished material in two months, versus the usual 12 to 18.

Netflix confirmed it is laying off about 6% of staff, close to 1,000 people, mostly in product, tech, legal and HR, while saying it will keep investing "aggressively in high impact areas" and remains on track for its full-year forecast. It had 16,000 full-time employees at the end of last year. The Wall Street Journal first reported the cuts from a memo by co-CEOs Ted Sarandos and Greg Peters. The layoffs follow Netflix losing the bidding war for Warner Bros. Discovery's studio and streaming businesses to Paramount Skydance earlier this year.

Zenzap, founded in 2022 by Guy Weiss with Noam Neumann and Jonatan Bien, raised $44 million from investors including Bessemer, Lightspeed and The Garage for a private messenger with an AI assistant aimed at frontline businesses such as hospitality, construction, healthcare and fast food. Weiss argues companies can't run AI agents over WhatsApp or iMessage within IT rules, and that Slack and Teams don't fit workers who aren't at desks.

Bumble agreed to be acquired by Ithaca Holdings for $1.3 billion, which would take the company private. It went public in 2021 at a valuation of about $14 billion; its second-quarter 2026 revenue was $211 million, down 15.2% from a year earlier, and paying users fell 16.4% to about 3.2 million. An independent board committee recommended the deal; founder Whitney Wolfe Herd did not take part in the vote and says she will stay involved alongside Ithaca's Ravi Gupta and John Hegeman.

ASML's third-quarter revenue rose 55% to €11.7 billion with a 57.5% gross margin, and operating profit more than doubled to €5.2 billion. It guided fourth-quarter sales to €14.2–15.2 billion and narrowed its 2026 forecast to €44–45 billion. Hargreaves Lansdown's review notes customers expect demand to outstrip their supply until at least 2028 and some want to order for 2029 and 2030, and that management says its planned 30% capacity increases for 2027 and 2028 won't be enough. The shares rose 2.2% in early trading.

At its Bangkok meetings the IMF forecast global growth of 3.1% for 2026 and 3.4% for 2027, with AI infrastructure investment offsetting higher oil prices from the Middle East war. In a downside scenario, a steep drop in AI investment would cut global GDP by 1.1% by 2028, including 1.8% of US output. "What if it wobbles?" Managing Director Kristalina Georgieva asked. The IMF's Global Financial Stability Report urged policymakers to avoid "complacency" about a pullback in AI investment and valuations, and a protracted war keeping oil above $130 would cut 2027 growth by half a point.

World stocks edged lower on Tuesday as concerns about AI spending weighed on chipmakers, which fell more than 1% on Wall Street; the Dow lost 0.31%, the S&P 500 0.10% and the Nasdaq 0.26%. Traders cited progress by Chinese memory maker CXMT and Broadcom CEO Hock Tan likening some flows into AI to "casino gambling." One portfolio manager said Nvidia and AMD usually trade down before the hyperscalers report because of uncertainty over their capital spending. Earnings season opened with JPMorgan up slightly and Wells Fargo down 2.1%.